FF’s failure doesn’t tell the full story about our broken political system

THE TV3 documentary series The Rise and Fall of Fianna Fáil is probably the first of many broadcast and print reviews of the party that seeks to place political events in a historical context.

The demise of Ireland’s once largest party deserves detailed examination.

Ursula Halligan, TV3’s political editor, argues the seeds of the downfall can be traced to organisational failure and that core Republicanism been made redundant through the Belfast Agreement. Replacing local Cumann with candidate-centred machines has happened in all parties. Without friends and family, TDs cannot get elected as potent appeal of being a generic party worker dies out. Bertie Ahern’s successful reform of Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution didn’t lose FF a vote last February.